Donald Trump, the oldest presidential candidate in history, held a rally today in Georgia, at the Georgia State University Convocation Center, which was the site of a similar rally held by Vice-President Kamala Harris just four days ago.
One of my Twitter/X heroes, whose ID is @acyn, has become quite expert at capturing and commenting on live video of events, and here is a clip that he captured from the rally:
Trump: And I am for electric cars. I have to because Elon endorsed me very strongly, Elon. So, I have no choice. pic.twitter.com/le3jL2gSCK
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 3, 2024
Two things, real quick:
1) Can ANYONE make any sense of any of this?
"There's no way you can ever load them up, they're called loading them, you can't load them. We're gonna have to spend nine trillion dollars.
In the middle West, you saw, they built chargers.
Now a charger is a gas pump with electricity coming through it, is that good? So, it's like a -
For eight chargers, they spent nine billion dollars."
OK, people, the country's GDP in 2022 was $25.44 trillion dollars. So the first number he threw out there, $9 trillion, is more than 1/3 of GDP. And he didn't even say WHAT THAT WAS FOR.
It sounds like he might be talking about the cost to build out a charging network sufficient for the fleet of electric cars at some future point - but did you notice how many words I just added to what the man actually said?
And....$9 BILLION DOLLARS FOR EIGHT CHARGERS???
A candidate for the Presidency of the United States just told the world that EV chargers cost more than $1 BILLION EACH.
Good God.
2) I trust that most of the world will recognize the above as the sheer lunacy that it is, just on the basis of common sense, or an awareness of reality. BUT...I worry about the people in the room. I fear that most, if not all, of them heard this and did NOT think, "Hold on, that makes no sense." I fear that most, if not all, of them left the rally believing that EV chargers cost more than $1 billion each.
For no reason whatsoever other than because Donald Trump said so.
Donald Trump's ascendancy to the Presidency, and his continued influence on a large number of Americans, does not present merely a political challenge; it has created an epistemological crisis. The most significant divide in our political life is not regarding any political issue - not abortion, not health care, not what to do or not do concerning Ukraine.
The most significant divide is around the question, "How do you decide what to believe?" Somehow, large numbers of people have decided to believe what Donald Trump says. Full stop. The fact that he is the one saying it is more important that what is actually being said.
Believing everything that any one person says, without any corroboration, is weird. Placing that confidence in a man who made more than 30,000 false or misleading statements during his presidency - which is to say, public statements - is downright bizarre. And extremely dangerous. He can tell these people anything, and they'll believe it. He can suggest for them to do anything, and some of them will do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment